Surprising Hope History: A newcomers' view of Hope from 150 years ago

Even in its earliest days Hope wasn’t a typical rough-and-ready frontier town.

Its founders wanted to make it a landmark of culture and good living, rivalling the two centers of the Moravian church, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Salem, North Carolina. With this in mind, in 1866 the Moravians in Bethlehem sent an energetic couple to Hope to develop a school — the Hope Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies.

This energetic couple, the Rev. Francis Holland and his wife Augusta Holland, had never been as far west as Indiana. But they were pleased with what they found. Their letters give early descriptions of Hope and life in the 1800s.

“Hope is quite a neat and pretty village,” Francis wrote to relatives back east, “not near so large as Bethlehem, and not so substantially built, the houses being mostly frame, and not so large as many in Bethlehem. They are however very neatly painted, and upon the whole, the place presents a very pretty appearance. The people are very kind, and appear to be glad that we have come among them.”

As the Seminary was being built on what is now Seminary Street, the Hollands stayed with the Winelands, whose hardware store is now the Yellow Trail Museum. They were polite about being woken up by the Mrs. Wineland’s many canaries. Canaries were not the only source of disturbance .

“In the morning if you rise early here,” Augusta wrote, “the Roosters are crowing about in every direction, and you cannot hear the voice of one single one at a time, there are so very many.”

There were other differences from Bethlehem. “Only think, the people here think if a thing is a picnic it is something dreadful,” Augusta wrote.

Picnics seemed to be rowdy affairs.

“They say at picnics there is always a ’Big Drunk.’” They call what we call picnics a Basket Meeting. They have some funny ways. Instead of saying ‘That’s it,’ or ‘That is the thing,’ they say ‘That’s what’s the matter.’”

To her daughter, back in boarding school in Bethlehem, Augusta warned that it was better to buy children’s presents in the East, because she could not expect a toy store in Hope. But groceries were abundant, and Augusta listed local prices:

“Butter is 30 cents a pound. Beef is 16 cents for the best, milk is 5 cents per quart. The best home made molasses is 50 cents per gallon. All eggs are 12 cents a dozen: Duck Eggs, Goose eggs, Chicken eggs etc.” She added, perhaps wisely, to her 14-year-old daughter: “I wonder whether you will take an interest in these things.”

Although the Seminary never broke even and finally closed, the Hollands lived in Hope the rest of their lives. They continued to send out a stream of letters filled with local news and, as time went on, with gossip. Their brick house on south Main Street is there to this day, evidence of how much they continued to appreciate the “neat and pretty village” of Hope.